Asleep At The Wheel

David Wu totaled a parked car in 2010 and blamed it on his hectic travel schedule.

U.S. Rep. David Wu crashed his car into a Ford Focus
parked on a residential street in Portland’s Forest Heights neighborhood
last year, WW has learned.

One witness says the
Democratic congressman smelled of alcohol. That witness and a second one
say Wu appeared impaired. A recording of their 911 call reveals the
congressman asked them not to call police, although the force of the
crash damaged the Ford Focus so severely it had to be towed from the
scene. Wu, in a statement Tuesday, said alcohol was not involved.

While
this development took place more than a year ago, it adds one more
piece to the puzzle of recent reports about Wu’s odd behavior in the
months before he won re-election last November in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District.

As WW first
reported in February, the seven-term lawmaker’s behavior grew so erratic
in the final week before the November election, staffers twice tried to
stage psychiatric interventions with Wu (see “Strange Wu,” Feb. 23, and
“Wu’s World,” March 2). WW’s reports followed a Jan. 19 account by The Oregonian about the departure of several high-level staffers from Wu’s offices after the election.

In recent weeks, Wu
has confirmed many details of those news stories, and in an effort to
exercise damage control, has apologized for not being at his “best.” He
says he stopped drinking in July 2010 for five months, but did so to
lose weight. In response to direct questions about drug use, he has said
he took prescription painkillers and other medicine to cope with neck
pain and the effects of a strained marriage, which ultimately ended in a
separation from his second wife. He also blamed a tough re-election
campaign for his troubles. Finally, Wu has said he suffers from a
genetic condition that causes him to react poorly to certain
combinations of prescribed drugs.

In the wake of these troubling admissions, several Oregon newspapers, including the (Eugene) Register-Guard and The Oregonian, have either called for Wu’s resignation or strongly suggested he not run again.

The revelation of this 2010 car accident is sure to open Wu up to even more questions.

On Feb. 19, 2010,
Karen Fog was inside her Forest Heights home with her friend Barbara
Tymer when, just after 9 pm, the two heard a loud crash. They went
outside on that cold, clear night to find a car had plowed into the
front of Tymer’s blue, 2007 Ford Focus, which was parked on the opposite
side of the street from Fog’s house.

They also found Wu
standing at the scene, next to his rented 2009 Dodge Charger, which had
apparently crossed from the right side of the street to the left to
collide head-on with Tymer’s parked Ford. The women say they did not
recognize Wu and that it was only later that Tymer realized he was a
congressman. (She thinks she realized this when she called Wu to follow
up with insurance paperwork and discovered he’d given her the phone
number of his Portland congressional office.)

That night Tymer asked Wu, who was alone, whether he was OK. He told her he was fine. But Tymer told WW he smelled of alcohol.

“He didn’t seem like he was raging drunk or anything,” Tymer says. “He was in shock.”

Fog called police and, according to a 911 tape WW obtained through a public-records request (listen to that tape at the link at the top of the story),
requested officer assistance. “I’m assuming that there’s some kind of
disability, if he was driving on the wrong side of the street,” Fog told
the dispatcher from her home. “He says he fell asleep. I don’t believe
him.”

A form from Wu’s
insurance company shows a payment of $7,062.30 to Tymer for her wrecked
car. Another $5,000 went to the lien holder, meaning Wu’s insurance paid
out the full value of the car.

“He did not want us to call the police,” Fog told the dispatcher. (Asked to respond to this, Wu’s office declined.)

After Fog called 911,
two Portland police officers arrived at the scene. Officer Jason
Worthington helped the two parties exchange information for insurance
purposes. Officer Brian Hunzeker performed a field sobriety test, which
Wu passed. He says he detected no odor of alcohol. Neither Worthington
nor Hunzeker is a state-certified drug recognition expert. There was no
Breathalyzer test.

Tymer says Wu told
Portland police he had fallen asleep at the wheel. A police spokesman
confirms this account. “There’s no indication that it was anything other
than fatigue,” says Sgt. Peter Simpson, the spokesman.

But Tymer says she
thought Wu’s claim that he had fallen asleep was implausible. Based on
the direction Wu was traveling, he probably would have had to make at
least two tight turns just seconds before the crash.

“How could you navigate up to that point and then supposedly fall asleep?” Tymer wondered aloud.

Tymer
says Wu admitted to police he had consumed wine earlier that Friday
evening but that he was tired from his hectic back-and-forth travel
between Washington, D.C., and Oregon. A local news story about Wu,
however, reported he had been in Oregon for at least one day before the
crash: He toured a fire station in Hillsboro on Thursday, Feb. 18.

So, where was Wu going? And where was he coming from that Friday night? Wu would not answer.

But the home of
Stuart Cohen, Wu’s former law partner and close friend, is just a few
blocks away from Fog’s, and Wu was driving in the direction of Cohen’s
home at the time of the crash. Wu also listed Cohen’s address as his own
when police asked the congressman for his personal information. Cohen
did not return a call from WW.

A spokesman for Wu
says the congressman volunteered for the sobriety test, followed
appropriate insurance procedures and was not cited after he “briefly
lost control of his vehicle.”